It is well known to use chewing gum comprising nicotine or complexes of nicotine to provide a user with appropriate doses of nicotine.
Considerable effort has been put into formulating chewing gum that can deliver nicotine to a user in a way close to what is experienced by a person when smoking a cigarette.
Different ways of incorporating the nicotine into the chewing gum by mixing or initial preparation of the nicotine have been disclosed in the prior art.
One of these prior art disclosures includes U.S. Pat. No. 5,488,962 specifically dealing with the problem of simulating the cigarette smoking with respect to the level of nicotine retention in the blood and saliva. According to the disclosure, an initial peak of nicotine level in the blood is obtained more similar to the corresponding absorption of nicotine when smoking a cigarette. The levels reached after a certain time corresponds to conventional nicotine-containing chewing gums.
A problem is, however, that a too high initial release may result in too much nicotine released, which may therefore cause a sense of burning in the mouth of a user.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to obtain a nicotine chewing gum with a sustained release of nicotine as compared to prior art nicotine-containing chewing gums.